Almost forgot to commemorate! On this day in 1938, approximately 700 people in Spokane, organized by the League for Peace and Democracy, demonstrated against a gathering of fascist Silver Shirts. The Spokesman-Review reported it as "Spokane's first anti-fascist demonstration." 
11 protesters were arrested for blocking the sidewalk into the pro-Hitler event. Deplatforming...'30s style. #silvershirts
A letter to the editor two years ago invoked this historic protest to call for a united front against fascist organizing today.
There's a large archive of material at UW on the Silver Shirts and their leader and one-time presidential candidate William Dudley Pelley.
There's a ton of interesting material there. I cracked up at an angry letter to the editor by a fascist Silver Shirt complaining about the Spokesman-Review was being mean for calling them fascists ("that's just what the Jews and the Communists want you to think," etc.).
^ Fascists didn't start screaming that they were being unfairly labeled as fascists recently...that tactic goes back to the 1930s, apparently.
The history of the Silver Shirts is intertwined with other fascist and fascist-adjacent far-right groups. Founded as the KKK was waning in the northwest, the Silver Shirts picked up former Klan members, while distinguishing itself from the Klan by rejecting its anti-Catholicism.
After the Silver Shirts were defeated--by mass protest, by only getting on the ballot in Washington state and being soundly trounced in the election, and finally by being outlawed as the U.S. entered World War II--some former members migrated to other organizations.
The founder of the Posse Comitatus (forerunner of far-right militias of today) was a former Silver Shirt. I have heard that one of the founders of the Aryan Nations in north Idaho had attended a Silver Shirt meeting. @KnuteBerger @DavidNeiwert's book In God's Country.
The protesters arrested outside the Silver Shirt event were: James van Orman, Ruth van Orman, Clark Johnson, Raymond Wildman, Margaret Weaver, Oliver J. Fisk, George Curbow, Caroline Haggin, Jim Haggin, Barbara Hartle...and I'm missing someone; it's supposed to be 11 :/
Some were active in Spokane's chapter of the Communist Party (which was much more influential and exciting in local affairs than the Silver Shirts at that time, though the Silver Shirts did have an office in Spokane starting in 1934). CP was working with unemployed councils.
Some descendants of the anti-fascist protesters arrested in 1938 still live in Spokane and have family lore about their activist history, including how some were later targeted by McCarthyism.
@threadreaderapp unroll
